Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> What should I write? --> Writing for Magazines
Articles Index: Site Index: Many new writers find that
writing for children's magazines is a good way to break
into the children's market. However, some writers --
especially writers who don't care much for reading
magazines -- don't care for the magazine market and
prefer writing books. While writing for magazines is
never a prerequisite for writing and publishing books, it
is certainly one way to break into the market, and can
provide experience in working for editors. Fiction Did you like reading short
stories when you were a child? Did you love getting
magazines in the mail? Can you still remember some of the
stories you read? If so, you might find your niche in
writing short stories for magazines. Magazine fiction, like all
children's fiction, needs to be lively, original, and
well-grounded in the child's world. In general younger
the child you are writing for, the more real the story
needs to seem. Very young children like stories about the
things they're most familiar with: mealtime, bath,
bedtime, going to the library, playing with friends. A
story about losing a favorite toy at the grocery store
and finding it again under the vegetable bins can be an
exciting adventure for a toddler. A story showing another
child or animals in their bedtime routine can be a
soothing read for a child who is getting ready for bed.
These stories may or may not be written in rhyme, but
they should have a cadence and rhythm to them. If you
want to write for toddlers, read magazines geared for
toddlers, such as Babybug.
Think about your own experiences at that age. How did you
view the world? What was important to you? What were your
fears? Jot down these ideas and compare your ideas to
what you see in the magazines. How could you turn these
ideas into short stories? Five-to-seven-year-olds are
learning to read, and need stories that they can read
with out help. They may still read concept stories that
they enjoyed as toddlers, they're branching out into
folktales, fantasies, and other types of literature.
Stories for this age group need real structure, a plot
with a beginning, a middle, and and end -- and always a
happy end. Children expect their world to be
orderly, and prefer stories where everything comes out
all right in the end. While the market for older
readers is small, there are still a few places to publish
stories for older readers. Boy's
Life, the official
magazines of the Boy Scouts of America, is one
long-standing and well-respected fiction market. If you
study a few issues, you'll soon have a sense of what boys
this age like: exciting stories about other boys having
adventures. Girls also like well-constructed stories with
strong plots and plenty of action, but in addition girls
like stories about people relating to other
people. Modern distractions such as
television, video games, and hand-held games have reduced
the time that children give to reading, and consequently
writers have seen a reduction in the magazine market, as
well as a move toward more graphics, less text, fewer
pages, and fewer stories. The magazine fiction market has
gotten tougher to break into, but a good story can often
still find a place. Non-fiction The meat-and-potatoes for many
magazines is their non-fiction, from short columns to
long articles. Most children's magazines today emphasize
non-fiction, but the kind of articles they publish varies
from magazine to magazine. Even two magazines that
publish the same topic may approach it from very
different angles. You may see in the market guides that
several dozen magazines all ask for crafts, but a craft
for a teen magazine will be different from a craft for a
toddler's magazine. Even different teen magazines will
want different kinds of crafts. One may prefer complex
crafts, while another wants crafts that can be done with
materials around the house. Another may want crafts
suitable for church clubs. The best way to become familiar
with the non-fiction magazine market is to read the
magazines you're interested in writing for. Visit the
children's section of the library frequently, or buy
sample copies from the magazine publishers. If there are
a few magazines you're very interested in, consider
subscribing to them. It is imperative that prospective
writers research the magazines they're interested in.
Otherwise, submissions are a waste of time. Before submitting your work, find
out if the magazine accepts all types of articles, or if
it is are theme-based. Cobblestone
publishing, for example,
publishes theme-based magazines, and they publish their
theme lists and deadlines on the websites for the
magazines. Writing for a theme-based magazine helps solve
the question of "what shall I write," and gives the
novice writer some practice in research, planning, and
meeting deadlines. However, Cobblestones magazines are
among the highest-quality magazines and the editors
expect scholarly research behind the articles.
For magazines that are not
theme-based, the writer may want to study at least a
year's worth of back issues, noting what ideas have
already been published. This way, the writer doesn't
waste time and postage sending an article about Abraham
Lincoln to a magazine that only recently published an
article about Lincoln. Crafts and other short
material Magazines need lots of short
pieces, including crafts, puzzles, rebuses, short poems,
party ideas, plays, material for columns and departments,
and similar pieces. As always, the writer must study the
magazine and the descriptions in a good writer's market
to understand what the magazines want in the way of short
material. While these pieces seldom pay much, they are a
neglected part of the children's writing market, and
often a good place for the beginner to make that
important first sale. Magazines and
rights There was a time when magazines
routinely bought First North American Serial Rights for
all articles and stories. This meant that they bought the
rights to be the first to publish the work, and then the
author was free to re-sell the work. Because stories and
articles often ended up in anthologies, this could mean
considerable extra income for authors who produced
quality work. Today, however, more and more
magazines are buying all rights, and the First Serial
Rights are becoming the exception. When a magazine buys
all rights, it means that they own the work outright and
can do what they want with it: publish it, anthologize
it, even rewrite it with the author's name still on it.
Publishers justify the move by citing the expense of
tracking down authors who have moved. Authors, however,
are less than happy about giving up the rights to their
work, especially fiction pieces that could end up in
anthologies, or even be made into picture
books. Selling first rights or all
rights is a personal decisions. Some new authors are
willing to give up all rights just to make a first sale.
Some established authors have given up on the magazine
market altogether. Some authors don't mind selling all
rights if selling an article that was tailor-made for the
magazine, but will try to negotiate to get back their
rights after a set period of time. Recommended Books: Writer's
Guide to Crafting Stories for
Children
Nancy Lamb
Writer's Digest Books, 2001
Nancy Lamb's advice on plotting applies to book-length and
magazine-length fiction.
Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> What should I write? --> Writing for Magazines
